Friday, September 9, 2016

Interview: OOMK zine

OOMK zine is a collective championing Muslim women and non-white/women in the zine scene. They are based in London and recently did a month-long tour in Malaysia doing research about the zine and print making scene here. They are also the co-organizers of DIY Cultures, a huge annual event in London. I did an interview with them for Mosh zine issue 18. Let's read an excerpt from the interview.

Hi, so you are still in Malaysia? Where are you now and tell
us your activities…

We have just settled back
home in London after 1 month in Malaysia. We have gone back to our day jobs
(teaching/graphic design/ research) and we are busy scheduling an exciting
programme of OOMK events, publications and residencies for the year and meeting
with potential collaborators.

Tell us more about OOMK
zine for those who haven’t heard about it…How did it started?

OOMK zine is an independent
art publication focussing on women, art and activism. The idea for OOMK began
when Sofia and Rose met at a zine fair in London became friends and began
discussing the absence of Muslim women, or any non-white and/or women of faith,
in the London zine scene and the creative industries more widely and the need
to create a platform to share the work that was being created but not being
seen.

Officially OOMK began in 2013
with the launch of the first issue, which featured interviews, profiles and
features of the work of women artists, writers and illustrators with a focus on
platforming the work of Muslim/non-white women. Each issue is has an underlying
theme and so far we have covered Fabric, Print, Drawing, Internet and
Collecting. Over the last few years we’ve included the work of political
activists, artist collectives, archivists, painters dressmakers, book-sellers,
herbalists and more. We are about to begin work on our 6th Issue: Food.

Overall our commitment is to
the politics of independent publishing and creating a space where women are
allowed to voice their work, experiences, and their interests on their own
terms, uninfluenced by the need to respond to dominant media narratives. OOMK
is now much more than a zine, and is a wider artist collective made up of 20 or
so women from various backgrounds and industries, and together we run
print-related fairs, workshops, and public discussions.

I heard you got funded to
tour Malaysia and do research about print/zine making here. From where did the
grant come from?

The grant we applied for is
called the Artist’s International Development Fund, which is run by a UK
funding body called the Arts Council in partnership with the British Council.
The fund is intended to help semi-established individual artists go abroad to
develop skills, expand horizons and introduce an international perspective to
their work. We had to wait 6 weeks to find out whether we had been successful
and whether our project could be supported financially and we were really
excited when we finally received the letter confirming we’d been chosen to be
funded. Either way, we were determined to visit Malaysia with or without the
extra cash!

SYB: read the rest of the interview in Mosh zine #18, which is in the making...